


Like the Devil Himself

by crookedassembly



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Mirror Universe
Genre: Academy Era, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mirror Universe, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence, and possibly beyond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedassembly/pseuds/crookedassembly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCoy first meets the kid in the dusty farm stretches of Iowa, sat on a Fleet-issued shuttle, chained up and grouchy.  Things spiral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in any fandom for YEARS, but I clearly still haven't got this particularly trope out of my system. C'est la vie.
> 
> Please note warnings, which should also include "author's extreme rustiness".

Stepping onto the shuttle, the kid looks like McCoy feels inside: bruised and angry and bleeding. He’s got gold hair and baby blue eyes, and he tilts a shark’s grin at a fleshy mountain of a recruit, plays a hand across his knife hilt and nods in greeting. Mountain’s big, beefy knuckles are scabbed over and sore like the kid’s face, and he blanches, can’t look away quick enough. McCoy suspects it’s high odds that the open slice along the guy’s cheekbone - deep, ruler-straight, and still seeping - belongs to the kid’s knife.

The other recruits all carefully keep their eyes off the newcomer. McCoy’s sense of self-preservation really must be at an all-time low because the kid suddenly looks up, catches him fucking _staring_ , and smirks, a tightening of muscles that stretch his swollen mouth. McCoy silently curses himself as he drops his eyes to his lap, too late.

A body falls into the seat next to him and of course. Of fucking _course_.

"Impressed?" The kid’s voice is low, vicious humour creased sharp at the edges, and he traces the shine of the handcuffs with his thumb, nail catching at the soft flesh of McCoy’s wrist. "I didn’t think anyone was shit-dumb enough to say no to Starfleet anymore."

McCoy wishes he could pull his hands away and tuck them into the relative safety of his lap. Instead, he clenches his fingers into fists and - with his hands just hanging there, attached to the railing, offered out - tries to ignore that dangerous touch. He doesn’t look at the kid.

"It’s not impressment," he grunts, and doesn’t say it might as well be, with all the choice he’d been given. "It’s aviophobia."

The kid freezes. Then - he laughs. It’s a low-throated chuckle, amused and _real_ , and McCoy’s head snaps up at the sound of it, surprised. The kid looks utterly delighted, and McCoy scowls at him, tugs against his restraints.

"I may throw up on you," he says, resentful.

The kid stops laughing, deadly serious once more. "I wouldn’t if I were you," he replies.

McCoy swallows. When the engines start, he shuts his eyes and holds on, white-knuckled and pushing back the thick nausea threatening to close up his throat. He feels the kid lean into him, the heat of his body uncomfortably close, claustrophobic. It doesn’t help the churning in his stomach any.

"What’s your name?" the kid asks.

It takes a stuttered moment for him to remember it. "McCoy," he mutters, faintly. "Leonard McCoy."

"Jim Kirk," is what he gets in return.

 

 

McCoy sits next to the prodigal son of Winona and the late George Kirk for the whole goddamn miserable journey and doesn’t even realise it. Things click rather horribly into place once they’ve docked and Captain Pike himself, grey and forbidding, shows up at the shuttle doors to offer Kirk a personal tour of Starfleet Academy. McCoy has little choice but to sit there, cuffed and ill and waiting for the flight officer to remember him, trying not to look as horrified as he feels.

He curses himself for a damned fool, but whichever way he looks at it, two and two don’t add up to make the square root of pi. The Kirk dynasty has enough power and money to have the kid’s captaincy bought and paid for already. And if only half the rumours are true, the Kirk boy is a sociopathic genius in his own right, a bright star with a great future in the Terran Empire. The Kirk heir doesn’t belong in the dusty farm stretches of Iowa, herded in with the other recruits on the cramped shuttle and wearing a face that looks like he used it to stop too many fists too many times. It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

It doesn’t matter, McCoy tells himself, unsteady with the feeling of a too-narrow escape. There’s no reason he should have to see Kirk again. The kid’s command track, no doubt. He’ll have one year to prove he deserves the gold shirt, fighting to the top of the food chain among other would-be officers and plebs, before being sent off-world for intensive training. And as Kirk fights for pole position, McCoy will be lucky to keep off the radars of the scavengers at the very bottom of the hierarchy. He’s a no one - just a washed-up doctor, jaded and dog-tired, with no ambition and nowhere else to go.

Kirk will have already dismissed him as a threat, forgotten clean about him, and right here, right now, McCoy has more pressing things to worry about. He would’ve had to have been hiding under a rock not to have heard the stories about the Academy. Nothing but blood and pain and death, with a nice graduation ceremony at the end if you last that long.

McCoy needs to learn to watch his own back because god knows no one else is going to do it for him.

 

 

Fletcher has him in a stranglehold, slowly squeezing the air out of him, and Leighton has McCoy’s arm bent so far behind his back that his eyes are watering, prising McCoy’s fingers apart to get at the hypospray there, when an officer clears his throat in the doorway.

"Cadet McCoy," the lieutenant says, sharp.

Fletcher and Leighton drop him like a sack of stones and step smartly back. Wincing, McCoy gets shakily to his feet, cradling his arm to his chest in favour of standing to attention. The room is a mess. Two of Fletcher’s cronies are out cold on the floor, empty hyposprays lying damningly beside them. His cadet-reds are torn at the neck and arm, and his left eye is already swelling shut, the skin of his lower lip broken.

"Yes, sir?"

The man takes in the state of the room without a word. Then he eyes McCoy, bored.

"You share this room with Cadet Fetcher?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not anymore. You’ve been transferred." He chucks an empty cargo box at McCoy. "Pack up your stuff."

It had been a brutal lesson, but in his first month at the Academy, McCoy had finally learnt not to question ranking officers’ orders. He nods, frowning, and turns to his storage unit. In what short experience he’s had with Starfleet, change rarely means anything good, but he can’t imagine anything much worse than the hell of his current situation. One-handed, McCoy places his meagre possessions into the box: an ageing picture of Joanna, his two spare sets of uniform, his drinking flask, a couple of PADDs. He slings his medical kit onto one shoulder, tucks the box under his good arm, and nods at the lieutenant.

"Alright," he says, and doesn’t look back at Fletcher or Leighton as he follows the man out of the room.

They walk through three different dorm sectors before finally stopping at a door. "This is it," the lieutenant says. "Your thumbprint has already been entered into the ID system and Cadet T’Hanning’s stuff has been cleared."

"Where is he?"

The man gives him a look like he’s an idiot. "He’s dead," he says, and leaves.

Left alone, McCoy studies the door. It’s plain and smooth and harmless-looking. Standing in the hallway with the throbbing ache of a sprained shoulder, a medical kit, and a box containing everything he owns, McCoy takes a deep breath and presses his thumb gingerly to the locking panel. He waits for the door to open, then steps into his new dorm room.

Jim Kirk is lying on the bed closest to the door, throwing a ball up to the ceiling, the muscles in his arms flexing. Up - down - catch. Up - down - catch. McCoy stares at him, his mouth suddenly dry. The door slides shut behind him with a too loud hiss.

Kirk snatches the ball out of the air one final time and sits up.

"McCoy," he says, with a sharp grin. "Glad you could join me."

McCoy doesn’t move from the doorway. "What am I doing here?" he demands.

"I requested your transfer."

McCoy grips the box he’s carrying so hard he's in danger of breaking it. His back is pressed tight to the door, like maybe he can run for it, escape before Kirk catches him. "And why the hell would you want to do that?" he asks. "You don’t know me."

“Doctor Leonard Horatio McCoy," Kirk says, with a smirk. "Born 2227, son of David and Marie McCoy. You’re a certified Terran doctor and held a small practice back in Georgia, where you published several credible articles and made a minor break-through in the field of neurology. You married above your station to one Jocelyn Haringer, great granddaughter of General Thomas Haringer, and had a female child together. Last year, Jocelyn filed for divorce - ‘limp-dicked’ was the phrase that most struck me in the official proceedings - and took everything you owned except your balls." Kirk flashes his teeth in a grin, amused, as he casually abridged McCoy’s life: his successes and happiness and failures and misery reduced to list form. "Imperial policy is that debtors that can’t pay get sent to the mines, of course. But not you. Starfleet saw your potential and stepped in, offered you the choice to enlist." Kirk raises an eyebrow. "Am I missing anything?"

Every sentence past Kirk’s lips twists like a dagger into McCoy’s flesh. The kid is just sitting there, arrogant and sure and smug with it - like he knows him, like he can read his file and calmly pass judgement - and McCoy’s hands are trembling he’s so angry.

"How dare you," he spits. "How fucking _dare_ you."

Kirk stands up then, a dangerous curl to his mouth, and McCoy’s heard the rumours. Rumours that this blond-haired, blue-eyed kid has already killed four cadets, maybe five. Rumours that Pike likes the kid well enough to turn a blind eye to anything he does. McCoy drops the box, lets his medical bag slide to the floor, and brings up his fists. His right shoulder still aches like hell but by god he’s not going down without a fight.

Kirk, however, doesn’t close in on him. Just stares at him like he’s some unknown specimen he wants to pin down and dissect, spread his ribs and look inside, discover how he works. "You’ve had no formal combat training," he says, slowly. "In the past 30 days, you’ve done nothing to ingratiate yourself with anyone of higher rank. You’ve been in the infirmary six times already, and my guess is that number would be significantly higher if you hadn’t stolen that missing dermal regenerator from Infirmary Six."

Even with a copy of his personal file, there’s no way in hell Kirk should know that. "So?" McCoy growls.

"So if you want to survive the semester, I suggest we come to an arrangement."

At that, McCoy laughs, harsh and a little hysterical. "I’m not some moon-eyed youngster you can scare with the family name, kid. Whatever you’re peddling, I want none of it. I make no deals with devils."

Kirk’s eyes narrow. One moment, he’s across the other side of the room, the next, he has McCoy by the throat, pressed back against the door. McCoy fights with all he’s got and it’s not enough, Kirk doesn’t budge a fucking _inch_ , just reaches out and grips the wrist of McCoy’s injured arm, twisting it around until McCoy’s _keening_ with pain, glaring daggers into Kirk’s handsome face, and fuck, his arm, it’s going to dislocate, it has to dislocate, any moment -

Keeping the pressure steady, Kirk leans in close. "The text books disagree when it comes to the best methods of persuasion," he says, soft. "Your old roommate subscribes to the belief that fucking an unwilling man until he bleeds is the best way to break him. He thinks that because he’s had some limited success in his endeavours, but mainly because he can’t get his dick up for anything else. It’s an inefficient method and not exactly reliable." Kirk’s eyes are too knowing when he looks at McCoy. "Case in point."

McCoy flushes hot, then cold, and for an indistinct moment, he forgets the pain throbbing through his arm. He doesn’t understand how Kirk can possibly _know_.

"Yeah?" he says, trying to pull the tattered remnants of his composure together. "And what do you do that’s so different, kid? Ask nicely?"

He suspects he doesn’t really want to know.

Kirk grins at him, calculating and dangerous. "I get to know my opponents," he says. "I learn their strengths, their weaknesses. Where to apply the correct -" McCoy gasps as Kirk bears down further on his arm - " _pressure_."

Suddenly, Kirk releases him, steps back, away from him, and McCoy doubles over, crouched over his arm as pain shoots up abused nerve endings. Black spots swim in front of his vision and, for a nasty moment, he thinks he might black out. The only thing less wise than being alone with Jim Kirk would be being alone with him unconscious.

"Relax, McCoy," Kirk says, and he’s back across the room, lying on the bed once more, throwing the damn ball. Up - down - catch. Up - down - catch. "If you don’t do anything stupid, we’ll get along just peachy." The ball lands in his outstretched hand, and he pauses, clenches his fingers white-knuckled around it. "But if you call me kid again, I’ll make it hurt."

McCoy lets his head fall back against the door and shuts his eyes. Then, with trembling fingers, he reaches for his medical kit and an analgesic hypospray to stop the pain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter than the last but the scene got pretty epic in length and it seemed a little silly to tag anything else on.

McCoy hardly sleeps at all that first week.  He has no appetite, food bland and unappealing as he struggles to swallow it down, and he stumbles through lessons, light-headed and bleary-eyed.  He spends all the hours he can in the relative safety of the infirmary, only returning to the room he shares with Kirk at lights out, when no god-fearing man would choose to wander the dark corridors alone.

Every time, he feels Kirk's eyes on him as soon as the dorm door slides open, and the itch of being scrutinised doesn’t fade as he moves about the room.  McCoy tries hard to ignore the kid’s gaze and fails, miserably.  His skin crawls when he has to walk past the other cadet's bed to reach the dresser and his muscles tense, _fight or flight_ , whenever Kirk moves in his peripheries, just a shift of his leg or the shrug of a shoulder - small movements, mundane even - but McCoy is certain nothing Kirk does lacks significance.  Intent.

He waits for something to happen, for Kirk to make his play, _anything_.  He waits and waits, constantly on edge, the tension wearing him thin and exhausted.  But Kirk does nothing.  Just sits on his bed and watches him, like he’s the most interesting damn thing in the whole fucking universe.

It takes seven days for McCoy to snap, ground down and tired of it all.  He’s never been one to pussyfoot around a conversation.

“When are you going to kill me?” he asks, bluntly.

It’s late night and dark in the room, but he knows Kirk is still awake.  Knows it because he can’t hear Kirk’s soft breathing - or any other noise, for that matter - coming from the deep shadows on the other side of the room.  After a week of sleepless nights, McCoy knows that even Kirk can’t remain completely silent all the time.  The kid dreams, just like anyone else.

He waits, his head pounding from exhaustion, his nerves frayed to nothing.

Kirk doesn’t answer straight away.  “It depends,” he says, finally.

“On what exactly?”

There’s the rustle of bedcovers shifting in the darkness, the sound of Kirk turning over in bed.

“You never asked the terms of my proposal.”

McCoy swallows.  He doesn’t know what he could possibly offer Jim Kirk - darling of the Academy and ruthless killer - to make any bargain worth his while.  He thinks of what Fletcher demanded, of what he took when McCoy said no, flinching away from the memories even as he dismisses the notion as unlikely.  He’s twenty-eight - an old man to most of the cadets at the Academy - and Kirk could have his pick of any number of pretty young things.  McCoy has nothing, _is_ nothing, and he has no idea what Kirk wants from him.

What McCoy does know - what he knows with a fierce knowledge deep down to his bones - is that he won’t play pet dog to some sociopathic post-adolescent, always ready and eager to please.  Whatever his many failings, he will not roll over and beg on command.

“I’m listening,” he grunts.

“My last roommate planned to kill me,” Kirk says, tone casual.  “He wanted to eviscerate me and hang my body on the flagpole out front to make sure everyone knew he did it.  So I killed him first.”

McCoy stays silent.  He doesn’t find the revelation overly assuring.

“Cadets here are one of two things,” Kirk continues.  “Hungry for power and strong enough to take it; or hungry for power and willing to ingratiate themselves with those who have it.  I find both types tend to make life equally fucking irritating - then, sure enough, they try and kill you.”

McCoy doesn’t understand where Kirk’s going with this, but he can’t fault the logic.

“So what does that make you?” he asks.

There’s a pause as Kirk appears to contemplate the question.  Then he says, quite simply, “The hungriest and strongest.”

A chill lodges deep within McCoy’s stomach.  There’s no doubt whatsoever in the kid’s words.

Bedcovers shuffle again, the noise of a body shifting across from him in the darkness, and McCoy can just pick out Kirk’s silhouette, blacker even than the dark of the night, as he gets up from his bed.  McCoy holds himself still, refusing to shrink back into his mattress as Kirk’s shadow slowly crosses the room towards him.

Kirk stands over his bed, so close McCoy fancies he can feel him against the bare skin of his arm.  His heart beats a dull, panicked rhythm at the back of his throat.

“You, on the other hand,“ Kirk says, softly, above him.  “You fit neither category.  I find that - intriguing.”

McCoy swallows drily.  “How do you figure?” he asks, gruffly.

Through the darkness, he can see the shine of Kirk’s eyes as he tilts his head to one side, looking down at him as if he can see McCoy clear as day.

“You have one of the best medical minds in the Academy, and I'm not just counting cadets,” Kirk says.  “You know more ways to kill a man than I do, and you’re big and gutsy enough.  You could take control of the entire infirmary if you put your mind to it, yet you stubbornly remain at the very bottom of the heap.  Why?”

Jocelyn had said something similar just before she had left him, McCoy remembers, the memory a sharp, hollow ache in the centre of his chest.  Stood in the living room in a summer dress, his wife would have been as beautiful as the day they had first met if it hadn’t been for the cruel twist of her lips, the way her hands lingered at Joanna’s throat, stroking their daughter’s skin in silent threat as she stood in front of her mother, crying.

 _You see_ , Jocelyn had said, _you see what you’re turning her into?_

God, but McCoy misses his little girl.

Suddenly, Kirk _moves_ \- lunging forward in the darkness, all hard muscle and grasping fingers.  He’s faster than anyone McCoy’s ever encountered, landing heavily on top of him, strong hands gripping painfully into McCoy’s biceps, sharp knees digging into his thighs, pinning him down to the bed.  McCoy struggles like a wild thing, bucking up, trying to dislodge the younger man, almost blind with panic.  But Kirk is a grinning shadow just an inch above his face, stronger, faster, and completely implacable, and it’s a fight that McCoy knows he’s already lost.

“And what,” Kirk asks, leaning in closer to him, close enough to be mistaken for intimacy, “did you say to your old roommate when he offered to make you his right-hand man?”  He hums softly as he rides out McCoy’s struggles.  “Did you change your tune when he stuck his dick in your ass, anyway?  Did you spread your legs, ass in the air, hole already lubed and ready for him, taking it because it was easier that way?”

“Fuck you,” McCoy snarls, fury rising in his throat even as his stomach clenches with fear.  This is too much like before, Kirk above him, Kirk holding him down, and his brain is stuck on a constant loop: _not again, god, please, not again_.  He surges upwards, desperate, battling grimly against Kirk’s grip, giving it everything he has, cursing, struggling -

He doesn’t move Kirk an inch.  McCoy falls back onto the mattress, breathless and exhausted; no options left.

“Whatever you’re planning on doing,” he says, bitterly, “just get it the fuck over with.  Clearly I ain’t stopping you.”

At that, Kirk shifts and breathes out a huff of laughter, the brush of air warm against McCoy’s cheek.

“Settle down, doctor,” he says, still too close - far, far too close.  “You’re stuck here.  You can’t wash-out, you’d just be sent to the mines.  You’re clearly not looking for death or a cock up your ass, but you refuse to play the game.  At this rate, you’ll be dead before the semester’s out unless you make friends - and fast.”

“And what, you’re offering?” McCoy sneers.  “Being your friend don’t exactly look too appealing right now, believe me.”

Kirk sighs and shakes his head.  Then, incomprehensibly, he lets go of McCoy’s arms and shifts backwards.  Surprised, McCoy just lies there, the room’s processed air flowing cool against his skin where Kirk’s hot, heavy presence had been just moments before.  He shivers.

“Lights, fifty percent,” Kirk says.

McCoy winces as illumination suddenly floods the room, squinting against the glare.  Black spots dance at the corners of his vision as he looks down his body to where Kirk sits, entirely composed, straddling McCoy’s thighs in a pair of boxer-briefs.  Kirk meets his eyes.

“This is what I’m offering,” he says.  “In exchange for you being your own delightful self, doctor, I’ll make it known about campus that you’re under my protection.  No one would dare touch you - not Fletcher, not anybody.  And there’s no strings attached.  No quickies after lights out, no sharing you with others, no stealing from the dispensary - nothing.  You have my word."

"So what's in it for you?"

Kirk shrugs. "Getting to relax in my own quarters knowing I've got a pacifist roommate who's too goddamn stubborn to ever be bribed or threatened into killing me.”

McCoy snorts, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

“You’re a logical man, McCoy,” Kirk says, rolling his eyes.  “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now.  You know that.  If I wanted to fuck you, I could have done it the afternoon you moved in.  Hell, I could have done it right there in the shuttle when we first met, you cuffed to the wall and completely fucking helpless as I rode your ass in front of the other recruits.”  Kirk raises an eyebrow.  “Have I done any of those things, McCoy?”

McCoy stares at Kirk, reviewing the bitter twist of his mouth, the gleaming awareness in his eyes, the absolute stillness of his body.  Jim Kirk is a predator, McCoy knows; a remorseless killer with a dangerous amount of ambition.  He still doesn’t understand Kirk’s motive in bartering for McCoy’s agreement not to kill him, not when McCoy obviously has no hope of killing Kirk anyway.

Either way, McCoy knows, he’s not going anywhere while Kirk still wants him as his roommate.  No transfer request would ever be accepted against Kirk’s wishes, and McCoy doubts he’s got the connections or social standing to get one submitted anyway.

“Okay,” he says, finally, unable to see any good reason not to accept the kid's terms.  “I’ll play ball.”

Kirk grins brightly at him in response.  It’s an unexpected expression, wide open and childlike - innocent, almost - and McCoy frowns, wrong-footed, as the younger man gets off him.  Crossing the room in his underwear, Kirk gets back into his own bed and says,“Lights off,” plunging the room into darkness once more.

The privacy of night is a relief.  McCoy grips his clammy hands into fists and takes in a deep, shuddering breath.  He feels constantly out of his depth with Kirk, treading water, only delaying the inevitable drag downwards.  Pulling the bedcovers up to his chin, he turns onto his side, away from the room and everything in it.   _Out of sight, out of mind_ , he remembers his mother saying.

McCoy wants to forget everything.

_Do not think of Joanna.  Do not think of Joanna -_

Shutting his eyes, exhausted, he finally finds sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Broadly speaking, my plan is that this will be an Academy-segueing-into-Enterprise story. I will be playing around with canon as I go along, and a lot of stuff I intend to just make up. :)
> 
> I feel this would also be a good opportunity to provide some clarity in relation to the non-con tag. The warning is intended to encompass various aspects of the Kirk/McCoy relationship in later chapters, so if that's not your bag you may wish to depart early doors. 
> 
> Also, thank you so much to everyone who left comments and kudos on the first chapter. It's been a seriously long time since I've written anything so the encouragement / reassurance is most gratefully received. :)


End file.
